


In brief, sir, study what you most affect

by middlemarch



Category: Mercy Street (TV)
Genre: American Civil War, Angst, Chess, F/M, Gen, Mathematics, Religion, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-01
Updated: 2016-07-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 11:01:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7358569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/middlemarch/pseuds/middlemarch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What is studied and what is learned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In brief, sir, study what you most affect

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tvsn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tvsn/gifts).



“She keeps Euclid in her pocket the way another woman would keep her Bible,” Henry Hopkins observed, the generous respect and fondness he had for Mary apparent in the tone of his voice, his broad smile. There was none of the tension in his jaw, none of the chivalric posture he displayed when he spoke of Emma Green. Mary was across the hall in the larger ward and Jed was allowing himself to stand idle a few minutes to chat with the chaplain and rest his eyes on the tableau Mary made. 

She was sitting beside a soldier’s bed, writing a letter it seemed from the way her slender neck was bent. The waning light of day was falling through the window onto her face and pooling on her aproned lap. It was November and the sun was weak, a broth made with only one bone, and the contrast between her dark hair and her fair skin was more pronounced. Her dress was some drab material, the plaid sober, and he couldn’t see if she had managed to brighten it with a twist of ribbon at the neck as she liked to do. He thought she should be wearing yellow silk, as vivid as a goldfinch or a jonquil, the cheer of spring all about her. It would be impractical, an expensive luxury she would gently reject, but still he wished for it. His wishes were wilder every day. He turned back to Henry Hopkins whose face had assumed a studied blandness Jed appreciated.

“And what do you think of that, Chaplain? Should she replace her Greek pagan idol with King James’s work and be done with it?” Jed asked. He had discovered Henry was not the naïve, idealistic parson he’d first considered him not yet purely pragmatic and dogmatic as were so many of the men of God he’d previously encountered. Hopkins had a sensitivity Jed had not expected and a keen sense of the suffering of his transient congregation. These were balanced by a hearty relish of the absurd and a more than decent grasp of chess which made Jed seek him out for companionship. He didn’t think Hopkins would declare the Bible the only book worth reading, but he was curious to hear what the man thought of an erudite woman. He knew the chaplain had grown up in a small town in northern New York state and had had a relatively sparse education until he went to seminary; they’d spent some evenings over the chess board recounting their earlier lives, such different paths to arrive at Mansion House together. Hopkins favored the Bishop’s Opening, always in thrall of his vocation Jed surmised, even on the checkered wooden field.

“I can’t see that Nurse Mary’s religious devotion is in any way impaired by her love of mathematics. In fact, I like to think God is well pleased to see her looking for the puzzles He’s left for her in the natural world. For certainly, not much remains hidden from her,” Hopkins replied. Jed thought of Mary’s tenacity in reordering the hospital, her quest to create a functional medical staff, and even the rumors of how she had nearly attacked Bullen, that wretch, and he nodded in agreement with Hopkins. He didn’t imagine Hale would have had a similar response and Summers seemed to think the world began and ended in a bottle these days.

“Does she read Euclid to the men then?” Jed paused and imagined Mary earnestly instructing the men as she changed their dressings, dabbed at their brows with a clean cloth. “Perhaps she frightens them back to health with the geometric theorems, setting them equations unless they do their best to recover. Though I cannot imagine her ferruling them if they fail at their assignments,” he mused. Not one man had died today; he could indulge them both with the image of schoolmarm Mary scolding the sick boys, ready to send a firmly worded note about the need to apply themselves to the mother waiting at home. Henry laughed, a pleasant sound that pulled smiles from the men they stood among. It was growing ever dimmer and soon the orderlies would need to light the lamps. 

“I don’t think Nurse Mary would be such a strict schoolmistress. She is already teaching little Isaac Watts, the messenger boy, and I believe I’ve seen her with Miss Green and Miss Beaufort in the library if the afternoon is slow and the men are all resting easy. I’ve never seen one of them with a sore palm after her lessons. She seems to be running a dame school from Mansion House,” Henry remarked.

“Is she really?” Jed replied. It would be like Mary to do it, even if he couldn’t imagine when she found the time. She seemed inexhaustible, except that he’d discovered her once or twice on that oak bench in the front hall, fast asleep in the evening, her hands folded demurely in her lap. He almost wished he could not picture her sleeping face, the private self she showed to the night.

“Oh yes, I saw her with Miss Beaufort and Em—Miss Green, in the library just the other day. Foster, what a sight it was, all three of them so studious, careful over their books and papers, and looking like a, like a springtime posy, all so fair. I couldn’t help myself, I said how charming they looked or somesuch, a compliment any other woman would have blushed to receive and don’t you know, Nurse Mary wouldn’t have it, she accused me of patronizing them, very fierce, as if she’d… smite me for my presumption! Miss Green and Miss Beaufort gave me such a look, it’s a wonder I still stood,” Hopkins said. Jed could easily imagine Mary’s dark eyes, how quick she would have been and how vulnerable kindly Henry would have been to her wit. 

“I know they say women are the weaker sex, but I can hardly credit it, Foster, not Nurse Mary. Even Miss Green can be quite…implacable. You wouldn’t expect it,” Hopkins added. 

Jed liked Henry all the more for the observation and the admission. He felt for the younger man, so clearly so deeply in love with lovely Emma Green, Dixie’s fair daughter; the barriers between them were less personal than those Jed struggled with for himself, but no less problematic. Emma’s parents would never give their blessing to a marriage to a poor Yankee chaplain and Emma herself often seemed caught between the worlds she inhabited. She didn’t have the same quality of strength as Mary; Emma might break. 

“No, I suppose you wouldn’t. That is, I don’t know that Nurse Mary has ever been what anyone expected, nor Miss Green. And Mademoiselle Beaufort has cultivated such a aura of mystery, who can know what to even imagine? Aside from Dr. Hale, very little stops him from speculating on any topic I find, more’s the pity” Jed replied, rolling his eyes. Hopkins smiled again, allowing Jed the usual railing about Hale without joining him. All he would say was that Hale was a weak chess player with little interest in gambits and strategy, only intent on bludgeoning his way to checkmate. For Henry Hopkins, it was a denunciation.

“Well, you’ve piqued my interest, Chaplain, with your tales of arithmetical lessons. I think I’ll have to see if Nurse Mary’s willing to take on another student in her mathematics curriculum,” Jed declared. It would be a change, to spend some time wrestling with numbers instead of stiffening muscles that didn’t want to detach from shattered bones, solutions more pristine than amputations and lancing. It would be a change to talk with Mary about something other than the hospital, to match wits with her and allow that she might master him. If he exceeded her, what would she say?

“I’ll wish you Godspeed then, and I’ll hope you’ll not need it,” Hopkins answered. The look in his eyes said he knew what Jed was about and he understood, even if he couldn’t approve a married officer’s longings for a woman not his wife. The War had made Henry less apt to judge his fellow man than any theology class. His own face in the glass showed every day the dreams he had of Emma, if anyone cared to see, and he knew Jed did and did not think any less of him for it.

It was not quite so easy to find Mary and ask for her tutelage. She was no longer in the ward writing a letter and Jed didn’t come across her as he ambled about the halls, peering into the rooms as casually as he could. Matron spotted him and gave him quite a searching gaze, before settling back to her pile of mending. Her narrowed eyes suggested she was well aware of the reason for his errand, but she was quite choosy about how and when she spoke and there was nothing to be gained by any comments she made now. If she felt Mary was in any jeopardy, she’d proclaim it to the rooftops, he felt sure. She did jab her needle into the blue wool coat spread on her lap quite violently and the message was not lost upon him. 

He’d given up his quest and decided to try again the next day when he returned to the small parlor for a book he’d left behind and saw Mary sat at a little table. She had several books opened before her and papers in a few stacks. She tapped the end of her pen against her lower lip and gazed across the room, considering something on another plane. Mansion House was as quiet as it ever got and the clock on the mantle was ready to chime ten. It had been a long day, he’d risen at six and she’d already been hard at work. He saw the little wrinkle between her brows and the way she closed her eyes for long moments in thought. If he could, he would kiss her closed eyes very lightly and she would allow it. She would look at him with a drowsy, abstracted gaze when she opened her eyes and he would see her recognize his face before hers, the tenderness he had grown to crave bright and warm. 

“Mary?” he called from the threshold, an appropriate distance.

“Oh, it’s you, yes, Jedediah, can I help you with something?” she answered, blinking a little to clear her vision of a troop of numbers, perhaps. Or maybe the contemplation of angles instead of angels. 

“It’s nothing that can’t wait, it’s so late and you must be tired,” he began. She had closed her books and straightened the papers, carefully replacing her pen and corking the ink bottle.

“You’re very kind, but I’m sure I can manage,” Mary replied. He’d learned to be judicious about what he asked of her as she made every effort to do any task she was set. He’d been delighted to find her one day sequestered in the small room she used as her clinic for the prostitutes, busy with a volume of her patient log, as she’d confided she was hiding from Nurse Hastings “and another of her interminable requests for properly prepared bandages, really, I begin to think Miss Nightingale exaggerated the difficulties in Scutari to hear Nurse Hastings speak of how well run the hospital there was and how easily it was all dealt with.”

“Chaplain Hopkins mentioned to me that you were tutoring Miss Green and Mademoiselle Beaufort and little Isaac and I wondered whether you’d be willing to accept another student,” he said.

“Oh. Certainly. Who is it?” she asked, clearly taken aback. Did she expect him to chasten her for her teaching?

“Me,” he said baldly. Perhaps it was an imposition, perhaps it was a mistake to ask, she would not feel she could refuse.

“Truly, Jed? Emma, that is, Miss Green and Mademoiselle Beaufort, neither one of them had ever had much mathematical education and of course, Isaac had only mastered arithmetic, though he’s such a bright boy, he picks it all up so quickly… But you, you’ve been educated at a university and in Paris as well, are you teasing?” Mary said.

“I’m completely serious, though perhaps now that you know who you’re supposed to enlighten, you’ll wish to demur,” he replied.

“Oh no! That is, it would be a pleasure though I hardly think I will have much to teach you, perhaps if you’d like to take a look at the later chapters in Gauss or, I suppose, we could explore LaGrange,” she replied. He was flattered at her assumptions about his education and intellectual prowess; he could hardly admit he had only faintest clue who either Gauss or LaGrange were. Surely, he would be able to master the work she had thought to teach two young women and a scrawny, barely literate boy.

“Mr. Hopkins said you and the young ladies were getting along quite well and seemed so engrossed in your studies, I thought it would be… refreshing to exercise another set of faculties,” he offered. 

“Should you like to take the Gauss then? The earlier chapters may be familiar to you already, you’ve only to let me know where you’d like to begin. And I could set you some equations and proofs so we may make the most of our time, that is,” she coughed a little, a nervous cough he hadn’t heard from her before. “I find that simply reading the text, well, I find it easier to truly comprehend the theorems with some more practical application. If you don’t care for it, we needn’t proceed that way,” she finished. Mary had become a little more drawn recently, the shorter days still overly full, but now she had a good color in her cheeks. She had a book in her hand and held it out to him. She pulled a piece of foolscap toward herself and quickly set down a series of symbols; it appeared she had set him four or five problems to address.

“I’m sure it will be fine, Mary. Did Miss Green and Mademoiselle Beaufort start this way as well?” Jed wondered.

“Yes, after I reviewed a little Euclid with them both. Isaac, I started with Euclid. I wish I had a Latin primer for him as well,” she said.

“Well, I am glad to matriculate at your Oberlin College, then. When should I return for our seminar?” he asked. Now he let his voice tease since she would know he was in earnest.

“I hardly think it is such an achievement as Oberlin! Would you like to try for Thursday evening, if our regular work allows?” Mary replied. 

“That sounds entirely reasonable. I hope you will rest soon, it’s been a long day,” he said.

“Is there any other kind?” she said with a winning smile, recalling their earlier conversation. But she stood and straightened her skirts and walked with him to the door, pausing to take up the little lamp that threw gold upon her face and into her hair. Mary walked a little ahead of him and he saw that she went right to her room; it was full of shadows until she closed the door behind her.

Jed decided he would not look at the pages she’d given him or even open the book that night. It was late, even later than he had thought, and he couldn’t give the work proper attention. He got ready for bed and settled in; it was growing colder and he had started to miss the comfort of a heavy quilt, the luxury of a well-stoked fire in every hearth. He woke early and admitted he was eager to see what Mary wanted him to read, what problems she thought he could solve. He sat at the table he had made his desk and placed her book before him and began to read. The papers she had given him he set to his left and allowed his hand to rest upon them, fingertips against the ink.

It rapidly became clear that he was overmatched. There was a little that was familiar to him in the first chapter but he read on, first trying to shake the fog of sleep from his eyes, then squinting a little as he read, pausing to try and grasp the theorems, the letters seeming to run from him, taunting him as they fled. She had taught this to Emma Green? To Lisette Beaufort, that lovely enigma he suspected had hidden within only a hollow center? He must have underestimated them, Mary most of all. For the pages were clearly much read, pencil marks here and there, a few notations of her own making. Some were dog-eared, the creases clean as if she could hardly bear to do it but couldn’t resist. Why one theorem and not another? Had this one taxed her? Did the next page hold some elusive meaning for her or did she find the arrangement of the variables mirrored something else she held dear? 

Jed turned to the pages before him. It seemed he might produce something for the first set of equations but beyond that, there was little he could imagine writing. How confidently she’d held her pen, no evidence of a pause in an inkblot or the widening arc of the line. Mary had worried he would find the work too simple and uninteresting. He snorted a little and felt the cold air shiver around him; he had not been able to find his woolen robe and the winter would be even harsher without its small consolation. He returned to the book and with a great effort, felt he had gleaned enough that he could at least ask her questions. The day of surgery would be a relief after these early hours of trying to force his mind to an understanding it had little basis for and he suspected, very little inclination. If Jonathan had sent the book along in the box with the medical journals and whatever volume of Trollope he thought would suit Jed, he would have leafed through it once or twice before setting it aside to use as a paperweight. 

Its true attraction was in the window it gave into Mary’s mind. He now recognized she was both precise and versatile, able to dance among the numbers but also to engage them; her practicality and focus had been evident since her arrival and with every new project she embarked upon, however her affinity for such subtle material, natural and incorporeal, struck him now. Hopkins had commented on her strength of will but Jed felt the command of her mind, so far beyond what a woman was ever considered to possess. How many others had ever appreciated this in her? She spoke very little of her husband but always in the fondest and most respectful manner; had he known what she was capable of? At Mansion House, Jed always considered himself most astute and discerning but he reflected on the encounters he’d had with Mary and thought Samuel had had her measure much sooner than he had. He wondered that Samuel was not listed among her students.

He had little time to return to the text before they had agreed to meet. The days were full of sick men, dying men, visiting mothers who wanted to thank him for hacking their sons apart so they might live. He saw the moon come out one night and he tried to remember its somber radiance when he was confronted with another belly full of uncoiling guts, the defined edge of a doomed liver. He did catch glimpses of Mary, moving among the beds in a pinafore stained with bile. He and Henry had a chess game started but each barely had a moment to move a pawn or rook though Jed took up the white queen in his hand and felt the scalloped ridges of her crown. He was too tired at night to do more than touch the cover of the book Mary had lent him and he was nearly too tired to be lonely for her. Perhaps he dreamt of her but he could recall nothing in the morning.

Thursday evening Jed managed to eat his dinner early. The stew was hot which made a change and did enhance its few charms. Mary’s herbal supplies were devoted primarily to making medicines for the boys now that her garden had died for the season and there was little but salt to brighten the mutton stew, the mashed turnips and the cornbread that crumbled so easily. He found an armchair near a table in the officers’ dining room and opened the mathematics book again, convinced this time he would make greater headway. After an hour’s careful perusal and a second cup of coffee missing its cream, he had to acknowledge his conversation with Mary would not proceed as he expected. His deficits were readily apparent—any real professor would strike him from the class roll immediately. Mary had come in while he was absorbed in reading and must have made a quick meal, for now she sat beside him with other books in front of her. Henry sat at the other side of the room, reading a slim book, likely some theological treatise. He was smoking a pipe of sweet tobacco which reminded Jed of being a child. Hale and Hastings and Summers had eaten early with Jed but had not remained and McBurney took his supper in his room this night as he often did on nights he worked late. He operated little but Jed didn’t envy him the copious paperwork that came with being chief medical officer.

Mary was so focused on what she read Jed was able to regard her unashamedly. She’d worn her hair in a snood, the elaborate braids further contained with the netting. She was finely made, the delicate edge of her eyelid with its dark lashes and the faintest pink in her cheeks, all the epitome of womanly appeal. He didn’t want to kiss her so much for her sweet red mouth or her slender neck, her smooth brow but for what she thought and what she might say. He wanted her but the insistent desire for her waist under his hands, the elusive scent of her, those hidden places behind her knee, between her breasts, those he could accept as any man would and manage more easily. There was precedent. The allure of her mind, her conviction and compassion, her lively humor and the tenderness of her grief, these compelled him and he had no defense against them. Jed had to admit to himself, again and again, that he had fallen in love with her but he could not act in any way that would dishonor her. He had worked himself into quite a state of longing and despair when she looked up at him and dispelled it with one wry glance.

“Perhaps you regret the endeavor?” she said, gesturing to the book before him, the papers he’d blotted. 

“I haven’t made as much headway as I had expected, no, but I wouldn’t say I regret the attempt. Tell me, these were the chapters you set for Miss Green and Mademoiselle Beaufort? The very same?” he asked, hoping he had misunderstood her the last time.

“Yes. Of course, we have had several lessons now covering that material and they had only the barest knowledge of mathematics when we started, but I think we have made admirable progress. Especially Mademoiselle Beaufort, she seems quite able though I had wondered when we started, if perhaps it was only a lark for her, or if we might need to give up,” she replied.

“You, giving up? Never! I think it must be your battle-cry,” he laughed.

“Well, yes, I can see how it would seem that way,” Mary said, only a little put out.

“Why did you think you must stop? How did you solve the problem?” he asked.

“Mademoiselle Beaufort would get so frustrated as we tried to discuss the work and then when she wrote out her proofs, it was clear she grasped the concepts. Quite readily, in fact. So, I realized I must adjust my teaching for my student, the fault was mine,” she said.

“Really? I cannot quite see how the blame is yours, but I’m still curious what changes you made in your tutorial,” he replied.

“I teach her in French,” Mary said simply.

“Oh, Mary,” he said. There were more learned women in the world, she was no Hypatia, but he had never met anyone like her. How could he help loving that inquisitive, persistent, brilliant mind, so eager to know, so willing to share? She had not Mademoiselle Beaufort’s feline charm or Miss Green’s seemingly guileless grace, but she had a vivacious intelligence that would never pall, a droll humor he often failed to account for, and an active, uncritical kindness he’d never known.

“Shall we see where you are getting… derailed, then? Or would you rather not bother? I know it has been so busy and this is only intended to pass the time, perhaps you and Mr. Hopkins would prefer to resume your chess match. Or you may have other occupations, letters to write…” she broke off, having made both of them remember whom he might owe a letter to. He didn’t speak to Mary of Eliza and almost considered California the moon. A reunion with his wife seemed as impossible as an astral voyage.

“No, there is nothing I would prefer to this,” Jed said and paused. It was entirely true, too true, the words hanging there between them, ephemeral but more clearly defined than any equation he had tried to solve. Mary looked down, the closest she could bring herself to looking away, and her hand moved towards his paper. Her fingers brushed his and he felt the pull to take her hand, to take her in his arms, and the counter-balance of her eyes which could not regard him and Henry Hopkins across the room, the most sympathetic chaperone they could have had. Mary dragged the paper towards herself and her pen moved swiftly above its white field, pouncing like a falcon on prey, this error and that. It hovered at times as she tried to understand what his mistake meant about his flawed comprehension and he almost wanted to take up the paper and tell her to stop wasting her time. She would say it was not a waste and then they would both have to face what she gained from it. 

“It seems you have grasped the concepts in part but you haven’t been able to… link them together? It is as if you catch the melody and start to sing, but with the advent of the harmony, you are distracted, you cannot follow either line and it ends all in silence. Or a muddle, this third proof, ah, I fear there is no salvaging that,” Mary said, her voice growing more confident as she explained. It was enough for her to be able to look at him again, her eyes bright. If she were his wife, there would be no distance or obstacle that he would accede to, it would satisfy him to know that every step or minute or rocket-burst was bringing him closer to her.

“I think your energies are better spent on your other students, Mary,” he said.

“I do not agree, but I will accept it as I think you are not finding the material as… gratifying or entertaining as I would have hoped. I did think, the young ladies and Isaac enjoyed it so, but then, you are a man grown, you have already explored these avenues and will have found what intrigues you most,” Mary remarked. She found a way to shame him even when she didn’t try, to make it clear how much he had already had and how little others were granted. What smarted more was to be outstripped, to know others he had deemed far his inferior could easily handle as puzzles the work he found frankly impenetrable, to be a failure before her, again.

“Well, as much as it likely does my soul good, I hardly desire further humiliation and I shan’t waste the foolscap,” he replied, a little bitterly. He wanted Mary and he couldn’t have her, he wanted Mary’s good opinion and her regard and he couldn’t equal a pair of misses who likely still dreamt about gloves and balls, a barely literate child who ran ragged through the streets. His thoughts must have showed on his face, one Mary was familiar with reading. She laughed out loud, an indulgent, appreciative laugh that took his measure. Jed saw Henry look up from his book then and observe them a moment before turning a page.

“Oh, Jedediah! How dramatic you are!” Mary stopped laughing and smiled instead, a fond smile that turned contemplative. “Though I think I must thank you,” she began and he interrupted.

“Thank me? For my dashed pride or my foolishness?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a grown man sulk so… competently. No, I must thank you because I was weary today and a little hopeless, after both those Hamilton boys got blood poisoning and I thought of what I’d have to write their mother… it’s been a harder week than most and I began to think God had turned His face from me, from us. And how He has brought me up short, to show me so neatly how He is always with us,” she said. Jed accepted her amused rebuke but he couldn’t understand what she meant about her faith.

“I don’t understand,” he replied. It was not as hard to say as he would have thought. Already, she was coaxing him from his sullen pique.

“To humble you with your inability to complete a mathematics assignment—it would be the only way to humble you—your intellect falling short of God’s ineffable mind… the little we can grasp of it He left us in the natural world, the, the inviolable beauty of integers, the incontrovertible principles that govern a plane we can barely comprehend. It is just perfect, how He has caught me out in my own doubtful sulking. And then your expression just now, when you felt like little Isaac had bested you. The hypotenuse makes an unwieldy saber, you know,” Mary laughed again, delighted to regain her sense of a benevolent, omniscient Maker who would reassure her with quadratic theorems, to joke with him about his own human flaws she seemed to find endearing. He hadn’t seen her so light-hearted in weeks. He didn’t think, he just reached a hand toward her cheek, grazed his thumb against the curve of her soft mouth. Amusement altered suddenly and completely, the space between them a chasm a sigh could bridge. 

“Have a care, Mary,” Jed said, his voice lower, as he let his hand drop away. Her big dark eyes looked directly at him. 

“I do, I think that is all I do, Jedediah,” she replied and now the laughter was gone and her smile as well but there was so much left for him. He could not take it though, he knew that. Without even consulting the shadow in her gaze, the unwelcome memory of Eliza’s white hand with his ring, Henry Hopkins’s honor and wisdom and censure, he knew. Jed rose, pushed the book back to her. He could not take but he could offer, if the offer was the right one.

“Perhaps we may find something else to study together, something new,” he said, his tone even and undemanding.

“Or even something old, one of Shakespeare’s comedies would not go amiss or “The Tempest.” We are also caught in a storm it often seems,” Mary offered. She did that, doubled the words, but never to trap him.

“I see you’ll punish me for my mathematical failings not with a ferruled hand then, but by making me read Caliban,” he said.

“Well, I could hardly take the role myself,” she replied, piquant, relieved at his changed mood.

“No, Miranda, you could not,” he said and smiled and walked from her and the room. Hopkins’s pipe-smoke had dissipated long since and Jed thought he smelled amaryllis, hibiscus, the burnt sugar of frangipani in a warm rainy night. He focused on the scent, not the unbidden image of Mary with her dark hair loose, a white orchid behind her ear, at her throat, the petals indistinguishable from her skin, save that her skin would flush if he touched her.

The clock chimed. Henry Hopkins waited a quarter hour before he approached Mary. She had returned to her reading after Jed left and it seemed like any other night except that it wasn’t. Each time, she and Jed stepped a little closer to the edge. Henry thought of how diligent Mary was and how much Jed cared for his patients. Hale had never sat through the night at a boy’s bedside as Jed had just this week. Despite her assertions to the contrary, Mansion House could not run on Anne Hastings’s experience alone, even if three quarters of her recollections were true. There was too much that might be lost if Henry did not speak. He thought Jed recognized his own expression when Henry held his breath at the sight of Emma absently shaking back her curls or when she pressed one small hand against her heart as if she might still its frantic beat.

“Good evening, Nurse Mary,” he started. She closed her book and gestured for him to sit beside her. “I wondered, if I may ask, will Dr. Foster remain your student? I can’t help feeling responsible-- I mentioned you were giving Miss Green and Miss Beaufort lessons. But he seemed a bit frustrated, unlike the young ladies, I’m not sure it suited him as it does them.”

“I, we—we have agreed to end his mathematical studies. They did not seem… propitious. It would not do for him to be so, shall we say, discommoded by an entertainment, I think. I would not like to think of the effect on the boys,” Mary said. She was every inch the Head Nurse now.

“A wise decision then,” Henry replied and nodded.

“We may read a little Shakespeare together though, if the men are not too sick. There is so much there, so much beauty…” she said, her eyes softer. It had been night for hours now and the only light in the room came from the lamp near the mantle and the waning fire in the hearth. Could Foster have resisted this temptation if he had been alone with her? Would Mary have wanted him to? Henry thought of the silvery track a tear had made on Emma’s cheek with the sun full upon them. If they had had this shadowed room, the company of old books and the long curtains at the window, where would his hand have rested?

“Nurse Mary, may I make an observation?” Henry said.

“Of course,” she said.

“You do not speak to Dr. Foster as the Head Nurse to the Executive Officer, nor as a Baroness to a gentleman physician. I think you must consider him… a friend?” he suggested.

She looked steadily at him. “I suppose, yes, I do.”

“I do as well, though I had not expected to. He has not always been easy to talk to, though lately… I find during our chess matches, we will speak of many things, not only the War and Alexandria.” Henry paused. Surely she would take his meaning. “Chess is a curious game, I’m not certain how well you know it. Its strategies and gambits, the way your opponent touches first this rook, then a pawn—it is a way of knowing a man I hadn’t imagined when I was a boy or even a seminary student. I had thought, with Tom Fairfax, the game would allow me… but then, no,” he broke off. Tom was still a thorn driven into his palm. Mary waited for him; she was used to the disrupted cadence in a man’s speech as he tried to find words for the sharpest hurts, the most monstrous fears. He spoke again.

“Dr. Foster would tell you I rely too much on the Bishop’s Opening. He is a generous player and he doesn’t use that against me as he could. For my part, I’ve noticed… he doesn’t, he won’t sacrifice his queen, not even if he should lose the game.” 

She breathed in, slowly, and closed her eyes briefly. How still she could be, rivaling the nuns at their prayers, but her hands were clasped in her lap and no polished beads spilled over her wrist.

“Mr. Hopkins, are you advising me?” she asked. It was a fair question—she was a widowed Baroness, the Head Nurse of this hospital, and likely his elder by a few years. But he was the Chaplain and Mansion House his parish. And he liked to think he was her friend, at least a little.

“Mary,” he said and his pause asked permission while his tone was instruction. She conceded. “Mary, I must try, mustn’t I?” She looked away then but not before he had seen how bleak her dark eyes could be, even without tears. Foster had not seen this, Henry thought, Mary would not want him to and Jed could not force it from her. 

“Yes, but I should not need your… counsel,” she said. She seemed unutterably lonely.

“I would say only this—if you feel… lost, do not forget God, because He has surely not forgotten you. I don’t say to search for Him only in your Bible, but you will know the right prayer, perhaps your little book of Greek axioms is the better place to begin, even closer to God than a psalm that a man sang so long ago,” Henry concluded.

“You are very kind, you know, Chaplain, more than you need to be,” Mary replied.

“Just as I need to be, Mary, for I am your minister as I am the boys, but I hope—I hope I may be your friend as well. The War and this place, the nights are so dark now and morning can be such a long time coming,” Henry answered. He contained his smile as he was proven correct with her response, for now she was consoled, even a little and now she would console. She reached out a hand to him as she rose; it was late and time past for conversation. Mary would find her strength in being his friend and Foster’s and Emma’s in turn and only God could know what more there would be. 

What she would whisper beside her bed before she slept he couldn’t say, but God would hear her and an answer would come in due time—the War would end, some way. A letter would arrive, travel-stained. A man’s voice would call for her down a hallway and Mary would set aside, unfinished but unregretted, the seventh proof for quadratic reciprocity.

**Author's Note:**

> I have pretty much established my fanon Mary is a math goddess but I thought the show makes it clear how active she is and it seemed like a natural progression that she would start giving lessons. This story began with the idea of Jed feeling like a fool when he can't do the same math problems that Mary has taught Emma and Lisette and then it... grew. I decided it would be fun to develop some kind of character for Lisette Beaufort; it will certainly make this story read different once we see S2. I also like the idea that Jed and Henry are friends who play chess when they get a chance and that Jed and Mary both know Henry is in love with Emma even if no one actually talks about it. This story is a gift for tvsn, who fills my Tumblr feed with amazing math and science posts.
> 
> The title is from Shakespeare, from The Taming of the Shrew.
> 
> And for your edification--  
> Hypatia /ˌhaɪˈpeɪʃə, -ʃi.ə/[2][3][4] hy-pay-shə, -shee-ə (Greek: Ὑπατίᾱ Hupatíā; born c. 350–70; died 415),[ often called Hypatia of Alexandria, was a Greek mathematician, astronomer, and philosopher in Egypt, then a part of the Byzantine Empire.[6] She was the head of the Neoplatonic school at Alexandria, where she taught philosophy and astronomy.
> 
> The theorem of quadractic reciprocity was conjectured by Euler and Legendre and first proved by Gauss. He refers to it as the "fundamental theorem" in the Disquisitiones Arithmeticae and his papers, writing “The fundamental theorem must certainly be regarded as one of the most elegant of its type.”Privately he referred to it as the "golden theorem."He published six proofs, and two more were found in his posthumous papers. There are now over 200 published proofs. 
> 
> Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio. The college was founded as the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835 by John Jay Shipherd and Philo Stewart. With its founding it is the oldest coeducational university in the United States and the second oldest continuously operating coeducational university in the world.  
> Asa Mahan (1799–1889) accepted the position as first President of the Oberlin Collegiate Institute in 1835, simultaneously serving as the chair of intellectual and moral philosophy and a professor of theology. Mahan's liberal views towards abolitionism and anti-slavery greatly influenced the philosophy of the newly founded college; likewise, only two years after its founding, the school began admitting students of all races, becoming the first college in the United States to do so.
> 
> Joseph-Louis Lagrange (/ləˈɡrɑːndʒ/ or /ləˈɡreɪndʒ/; French: [laˈgrɑ̃ʒ]), born Giuseppe Lodovico Lagrangia or Giuseppe Ludovico De la Grange Tournier (also reported as Giuseppe Luigi Lagrange or Lagrangia) (25 January 1736 – 10 April 1813), was an Italian Enlightenment Era mathematician and astronomer. He made significant contributions to the fields of analysis, number theory, and both classical and celestial mechanics.
> 
> Anthony Trollope (/ˈtrɒləp/; 24 April 1815 – 6 December 1882) was one of the most successful, prolific and respected English novelists of the Victorian era. Among his best-loved works is a series of novels collectively known as the Chronicles of Barsetshire, which revolves around the imaginary county of Barsetshire. He also wrote perceptive novels on political, social, and gender issues, and on other topical matters.
> 
> The Tempest is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1610–11, and thought by many critics to be the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone. It is set on a remote island, where the sorcerer Prospero, rightful Duke of Milan, plots to restore his daughter Miranda to her rightful place using illusion and skilful manipulation. He conjures up a storm, the eponymous tempest, to lure his usurping brother Antonio and the complicit King Alonso of Naples to the island. There, his machinations bring about the revelation of Antonio's lowly nature, the redemption of the King, and the marriage of Miranda to Alonso's son, Ferdinand.


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